Ill (ii)
Ill (ii) Andrew Burr
I am impressed, as we often are at occasions like this, with the character and quality of God's workmanship. I want especially to follow what has been said, by noticing the correspondence that we see between the works of His people and His own work in them. The apostle in writing to the Corinthians speaks of God's work as "wrought” work. It is striking that the Lord speaks of the woman of whom we have heard in the same way: "she has wrought a good work". We are accustomed to thinking of what God can do in wonder-working power, how the universe in which we are was summoned into being with a word. God has the power to do that, but His work in His saints is wrought work: "Now he that has wrought us for this very thing is God, who also has given to us the earnest of the Spirit", 2 Cor 5: 5. Wrought work takes skill and time. The idea is especially that it is done to a pattern. I am impressed to think that the woman of whom we have spoken was working to the same pattern as Jesus, working to the same pattern as God Himself. I think we can say it of our sister as well. She had an understanding of what the pattern was and her work was to that pattern. It was wrought work, and wrought work, as we know, is to last. It is usually undertaken in indestructible materials. So is God's work and so is the work of which we have heard: "Wheresoever these glad tidings may be preached in the whole world, what this woman has done shall be also spoken of for a memorial of her", Mark 14: 9. That is indestructible work, and the same goes, I am sure, for what our sister has done among us.
Our brother has observed that her work is completed and, as he said, and it is in a sense true, God's work is completed. I would like to suggest, beloved, that there is also a sense in which God's works in our sister awaits completion. There is one more act of God's work to conform her and us and all His own "to the image of his Son", Rom 8: 29. Our sister's body lies now in death but when God's work is finished she will live in a body of glory that is like His own body of glory. That will be a body which, according to that passage in Corinthians, is a fit repository for the wrought work. The body in which our sister has been has become too limited to express that work fully. It requires a body of glory fully to display what God has wrought in each one of His own. It is a very wonderful thing that the Workman who will make that transformation is the same whose work is going on in each one of us. It is the same Workman whose work is and should be expressed in us and in our works. How wonderful that is beloved. What a part it is of the great privilege of Christian fellowship, wherever enjoyed, that we are in the company of people in whom God is working and where that work is coming into expression.
I recall one more passage: Paul says in Romans that "all things work together for good to those who love God", Rom 8: 28. Paul says "we do know". We do not always live as if we know it. Sometimes perhaps we do not always live as if we believed it, but it is true. A very important thing goes along with that, which is that no workman's work is to be judged until it is finished. Our sister's work can be judged, in that sense, because it is finished, judged with divine approval. But God's work in each one of us, including our sister, awaits completion, as I have suggested. The full glory of that work will then be seen. We may then see that things forgotten, things discounted, things regretted, things that have caused disappointment and many other emotions working them out will be among the "all things" that feature in God's finished work.
What a prospect there is before us! Now we are in the presence of the great Workman and His works. We can look at one another and see features that will all come out when the finished work is displayed. May He bless the word!